What you gotta do to get 6 million dollar research grant?

By Ushanandini Mohanraj

Getting grants for your research is every researchers dream. However thinking of a research proposal which would fetch you money is not everyone’s cup of tea. Here is one such interesting and innovative research which just got things right.

The goal was to build palm-size devices that can quickly identify infection causing germ in the hospitals and also provide information about dosage needed to kill the bacteria.

Current testing methods can take up to three days to get these answers. But when a hospital patient is too ill to wait that long, physicians often make educated guesses and prescribe broad-spectrum antibiotics. These may help the patient, but the medicine can also allow some bacteria to adapt and survive, leading to the growth of antibiotic-resistant microbes.

To prevent such rise in smart drug resistant bacteria, Johns Hopkins professor Tza Huei Wang states that we need to be faster and more precise in the way we diagnose and treat people with bacterial infections. Hence he and his team are working on to build the new micro fluidic testing devices. It is believed that the technology will deliver results within just three hours!

Wang’s project was one of nine antimicrobial resistance diagnostic projects selected for funding recently by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. The team is expected to ultimately receive nearly $6 million in NIAID support.